You have heard about blogging. It's an awesome yet cost effective method for businesses, which helps them publish great content and build a high-quality audience.
You might have heard how some businesses created their blog and got famous. But every blog on a business website doesn't achieve such fame.
This post demystifies some of the most common blogging mistakes and we share with you some very important tips, which we follow and will also help your business blog create a buzz online and boost your marketing efforts.
But first some benefits of blogging for your business.
Benefits of Blogging for Business
- Helps in Search Engine Optimization - All the important search engines, be that Google or Bing, love fresh high-quality content. A blog also provides you with the ability to attract high-quality natural links, something even top search engine optimizers find hard to create. These inbound links are actually the most important ranking factor. In addition another low hanging fruit for a quality blog post is that it would almost automatically rank on the top for long tail keywords, thus providing high quality organic traffic almost for free. Websites with a well kept blog witness a phenomenal increase in organic traffic. So if SEO is your priority, which it certainly should be, a blog would be a great start. We understand the importance of Blogging and thus have it as an integral part of all our SEO packages.
- Transform into an industry leader - When you consistently create high-quality original-content on your blog, you are actually establishing yourself as an industry leader. Whenever people want information about that topic, they come to your blog and gradually you transform into a resource which people trust and love to share.
- Readers can easily share your content - A blog gives you an opportunity to create viral traffic. How? Whenever someone wants to share your blog post, he or she just has to copy the URL and post it on a social media platform or simple email it to a friend. To make matters easier, Click to Share Buttons by popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and many more don't even require copying the URL. All you need to do is click the button and approve the post. It's that simple.
- Share your own content on Social Media - Blog posts provide you with valuable content which you can share on your social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and many more. What's more is that you can convert these posts into smaller, more specific and purposeful pieces across several social media posts. This gives you abundant information to share across your channels thus keeping your audience engaged.
- Lead generation - You can generate an amazing amount of leads just from your blog. All you need to do is create links back to your main content and create simple call-to-action across all your posts. It's proven that on average a website with a high quality blog will generate much more leads than one without. But please remember, quality is essentially important. The way users consume content online is very different from how they consume it offline. Low quality posts will surely put-off your website users.
- Build relationship with existing and new clients - By posting quality posts which provide answer to people's query and which they also find engaging, you are not only opening new gateways for existing as well as prospective new clients to connect with you, but also providing a channel for direct active communication through the comments section. Blogging is a great method through which people can easily connect with your business.
- Helps in improving the conversion rate - Blogging directly helps improve your conversion rate in two main ways. First, a good blog gives a clear signal that your website is alive and that it is being taken care of. This has a very positive effect on a prospective lead and he or she is more likely to fill up your form. Secondly, as a blog helps in transforming your business name into an industry leader, people will certainly trust your brand name thereby improving your conversion rate.
- Helps build your email list - Building your email list isn't easy but blogging can be really helpful. When more people visit your blog you are automatically creating more prospective users who might like to get added in your email list. By creating great posts you are certainly going to get a decent number of email sign ups. You can further add to this list by giving some promotional offers for email sign ups.
- Makes your brand more human - When we are blogging we get the opportunity to make strong connection with the readers by addressing their concerns and giving them the best solutions. This also gives us a chance to share our mission with these readers thereby making our brand appear much more human. The comment section is another powerful platform for readers to directly communicate with individuals.
Blogging Tips for Business
- Share your posts on Social Media - Use Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and others to share your posts. These platforms have a very active and a huge user base. A simple share could transform into an impressive content viral. As mentioned above you can easily convert a bigger post into number of smaller, more specific and purposeful pieces for posts, which can then be shared across your social media channels.
- Use keywords in your post - Keywords are the words or phrases search engine users use to find information. You can use tools such as Google's Keyword Planner to select the best handful of keywords. This process of selecting a handful of target keywords is called Keyword Analysis and is the most basic aspect of any SEO campaign. Once you have selected few keywords you can use them in various places across your post and also do some on-page SEO optimization. These simple efforts can become very fruitful for your Search Engine presence. Whether it’s small business SEO, Corporate SEO or Local SEO, keyword analysis should be done extremely well.
- Use Calls to Action - Add call to action in your blog posts. When you have multiple people visiting your blog, it gives you an opportunity to convert them into a lead. Calls to action could offer a freebie or a helpful link to another post. If the situation deems fit you can also direct some traffic to a main target page of your website.
- Use customer questions as your blog topic - Our customers often ask questions that can be converted into a meaningful post. While on one hand it will help them by answering their queries, on the other hand it will provide you with a topic for actionable content that can be very engaging for your users.
- Start a blog on your own website - If you are using a free blogging platform like WordPress.com or Weebly.com for your blog, you most likely have a domain name such as yourblog.wordpress.com. While this is better than having no blog at all, but you are losing on many benefits which you could have achieved, had you have a blog on your own website. With a free version of downloadable Wordpress software, which you can easily host on your own server, you really don't have to compromise. Simple install Wordpress on your server and get started with your blog.
- Add interesting images to your posts - "A picture is worth a thousand words"- this idiom suits so well to blogging. People on the internet don't read word to word. Adding few images can help them retain much more information and as a result, they might remember your brand/blog as well. Your content will become much more interesting and the main image can be included in the social media posts that you or your readers share.
- Be regular and consistent - This is super-duper important. Whatever the purpose of your blog, post regularly and be consistent. A decent number to aim would be 15 posts per month. But if that isn't possible, do 2 posts per week. Use an editorial calendar. If you don't blog regularly, users might just forget your blog. Don't let that happen.
Blogging Mistakes
- Don't be over promotional - Be true to your blog topic. Readers are most probably looking for quality information about the main topic of your blog, and not how awesome your product is or how awesome you are at providing a certain service. This might actually cause frustration and at worst, the user might not be able to focus on the main information and eventually leave your website.
- Not using basic SEO skills - Once you start creating a post, it's easy to completely forget about SEO. But that's a very big mistake. Search Engine Optimization is a great way to get high-quality organic traffic. Organic traffic converts very well and is eagerly searching for information on your post. Besides creating a great post, basic SEO includes on-page optimization activities such as content optimization, adding title tag, meta description, proper headings, image alt tags, internal links and page speed optimization. Advanced SEO includes activities such as Schema implementation and Back link creation. When we create blog posts as part of our SEO services, we ensure proper optimization of all SEO aspects.
- Grammatical or spelling errors - We all make small mistakes, more so while writing. Writing errors such as punctuation, grammatical or spelling errors, can weaken your credibility and at some readers might lose interest in your post altogether. Using simple tools such as MS Word can help you avoid most of these errors.
- No clear direction - Each post should have a clear direction and the writer shouldn't lose it till the end of that post. Make a strategy for your post and stick to it. Otherwise it may become boring and eventually less interesting.
- Don't have a target audience in mind - Always have a target audience in mind before writing a blog post. It will help you create reader friendly content which is more likely to engage them. Obviously you can't consider every person who might read your post, but knowing the majority of readers is good enough.
- Being presentation instead of conversational - Blogging is a slightly informal writing platform. Being conversational rather than presentation helps by maintaining that touch. As a result more readers are likely to get engaged with it. Our goal should be to create a buzz and not just inform readers about a topic, which is only possible if users share a post in their network and comment on it.
- Not using basic technology skills - Use tools such as Share Buttons, Follow Buttons, Link Promotion, List Building and Related Posts. Make sure your blog looks good and has a good user experience. Free software such as Google Analytics are a great tool for analyzing traffic and can come handy at a later date.
We have tried to cover as many points as we could, but could have missed some too. Please feel free to share your thoughts by using our comment section.
Comments
Felix
Hi a very cool blog!! Beautiful.. Wonderful tips.. I am bookmarking your website. I am happy to find numerous helpful info and want to work out extra strategies in this regard, thanks for sharing...
Punye Aggarwal
Hi Felix, Thank you so much for bookmarking our website. I am so glad that you liked our blog post and that you found it helpful.
Jeannie
An impressive share! I had just forwarded it to one colleague who was doing a little research on this. And he in fact ordered me lunch due to the fact that I found it for him... lol. Let me reword this.... Thanks for the meal!! and yeah, thanx for spending some time to talk about this issue here on your blog.
Punye Aggarwal
Hi Jeannie, thank you so much. I am glad he ordered that meal for you :-) and more than happy to know that the post helped your team.
Keesha
I couldn't agree more with your takeaway.
Punye Aggarwal
Hi Keesha, many thanks for your comment.
Carmelo
I just couldn't go away from your website. I actually loved the usual information that you have provided to your guests? I have decided, I will frequently come and cross-check any new posts from your blog.
Punye Aggarwal
Hi Carmelo, thank you so much. I am really glad that you loved our posts so much.
